Like its titular tinkerers, The Boxtrolls is drawn to a familiar patchwork of a story, collecting ‘scraps’ from other works of animation that are attuned
Category: Reviews
The Babadook
Because it hides amorphous behind so many masks, no bogeyman is outgrown by its tormented. The Babadook, Jennifer Kent’s brilliant debut as director, appears latched
Maria Leonora Teresa
If the mechanics of terror are as superficial as placing drum-hits and cheat-scares, then the genre might as well be dismissed moot, at the easiest,
Siquijor: Mystic Island
In horror, sincerity stands as the most welcoming and, simultaneously, repelling factor for a genre filmmaker. Terror is forthright; this fundamental directness of the genre both
The Gifted
Besides the Blue Suede-sequence from Boy Golden, the epilogue in Chris Martinez’s Kimmy Dora: Ang Kyemeng Sequel is one of the cleverest things to grace
San Lazaro
In the occult film San Lazaro, the demons taking over its characters are only internal and untapped; one apparently does not need a soul-consuming entity in
Talk Back and You’re Dead
There is but a single thread stringing together the story of Talk Back and You’re Dead, thus far the latest amongst the Wattpad-imports currently most ubiquitous
Wolf Creek
The smaller moments in Greg McLean’s Wolf Creek inspire liberation from the conventions of grotesque cinema: a slight, giggly yet sincere wedding of the lips; the
Diary ng Panget
The general observation for Andoy Ranay’s Diary ng Panget is that it can be viewed as a substandard Cinderella byproduct — and it is — where the youth revolt
Barber’s Tales
For most of Jun Lana’s new film Barber’s Tales (alternatively known as Mga Kwentong Barbero), the women who live in the small rural town fraught
Ang Katiwala
Meant — rather explicitly — as a propaganda for the late President of the Commonwealth of the Philippines Manuel L. Quezon, Aloy Adlawan’s Ang Katiwala (The
Les Revenants
In Les revenants (They Came Back, 2004) the threat posed by a vast river of bodies inexplicably risen from their recent deaths, is far more internal
Final Exam
Echoing John Carpenter’s seminal slasher, Jimmy Huston’s almost-forgotten Halloween wannabe Final Exam (then an unconscious subversion of the slasher genre), is an audaciously soiled exercise yet comes to
1st Ko Si 3rd
In Real S. Florido’s 1st Ko si 3rd time plays two roles: one that creates a void and another that fills it. The case of
Children’s Show
Only a few frames from completely wallowing in its relentless, almost-stifling realism, director Roderick Cabrido’s debut feature Children’s Show swivels to the truly weird and
#Y (Hashtag Y)
Gino M. Santos’s follow-up to his exuberant if shrouded debut The Animals is set once again within a circle of upper-class, party-‘till-drop youth (here, a quartet
K’na, the Dreamweaver
“When Kana, a young T’boli woman, becomes a dreamweaver, she has the chance to weave together her village’s warring clans. But, will she give up true love to do so?”
Guardians of the Galaxy
Our fifteen-year-old selves, as I am confident is the same for most, live in an era in which we are most willing to plunge and
